The Cookie Monster
by betawho
Summary: The Doctor does some maintenance on the Tardis, with unexpected side effects for Rose.
1. Chapter 1

**The Cookie Monster **

"Rose!"

"What?!" she yelled from down the corridor.

"Where's my sonic screwdriver?"

"It's in your pocket!"

"I'm not wearing my pocket!"

"Huh?" Rose stuck her head into the Tardis console room and looked around. The Doctor was indeed not wearing his pockets. He was in his shirtsleeves, buried upside down halfway in the Tardis decking as he did something unexplainable to the Tardis. His hand waved vaguely in the direction of his coat and jacket which were thrown over the curved support nearest the door.

Rose rolled her eyes and went to get it for him. "Here." She slapped his screwdriver into his groping hand and crouched down trying to see what he was doing.

"Wonderful. Thank you." He twirled the screwdriver in his hand, took a firm grip, and whacked the butt of it against some recalcitrant piece of machinery above him. Something popped loose with a faint gonging sound. "Hold this for a minute." With a few wiggling gyrations, he managed to make enough room to get the piece free of the deckplates, and handed her what looked like a huge pop bottle cap, a foot and a half in diameter.

She turned it over, staring at it, it even had a wavy line etched in the metal, like the Coca Cola logo. The Doctor grunted and wiggled, managing to fold more of his skinny self into the tight space, he got his feet under him and pushed upward, toward the deckplates, but he didn't emerge above them. Rose's eyes widened and she knelt down, staring into the repair well. The Doctor's feet were still there, but the upper half of his body had disappeared. He raised one leg as if he was bracing his knee on a ledge to hike himself higher, his other foot came up off the plating and Rose panicked.

"What are you doing?!"

The foot settled back down again, and the Doctor's voice answered, echoing as if from a large barren space. "I thought it was about time I fixed the gravitic stabalizers."

"But, where are you going?" She looked above the decking then below. That was impossible. She was tempted to grab his ankle before he disappeared entirely.

He sighed. "I need to realign the relative kinetic buffers. And from the sound of things I'm going to have to pull the lateral balance cones, again. I..."

"Oh, shut up," Rose whispered to herself. He could go on like this for days. "Budge up." she yelled and lowered herself down into the repair well. His legs moved a half step backward and she twisted around, and looked up. The Doctor's body ended at his hips. The upper half of his body disappeared into a blackness the same diameter as the bottlecap he'd given her. She was no better informed than before she'd seen it.

"Well, if you're just going to sit there, give us a leg up." One white sneakered foot raised, blue suited leg bent, waiting. Reluctantly, she braced her elbow on the flooring and he stepped into her palm and boosted the rest of himself up into the blackness, twisting as if he was sitting on a ledge, then pulling his legs up. The second his soles disappeared, the blackness vanished. Leaving Rose looking up through the deckplates at the console.

"Doctor!"

The stead hum of the Tardis abruptly died. The green glow of the console faded to black. The spotlights all around the console room popped, one after another, like a string of firecrackers. Rose jumped and twisted. That impossible ambient light that always filled the Tardis faded away, there was no sound. No clicks, no whirs, no sighing life. Dead, dark, and silent. Alone. Adrift in space. No Doctor.

Then the gravity failed.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Cookie Monster p.2**

"Awp!" Rose grabbed the deck plating at the edge of the well, instinctively jumping to her feet. But her feet continued on up, above her head. She hooked her fingers into the grating and tried to pull herself back down, one arm pinwheeling, kicking her legs in the air, looking for traction. She found it, her ankle cracked against the metal rim of the repair well, shattering pain shot up the side of her body and she started to spin, away from the angle of the blow, wrenching her arm at the shoulder as her body tried to twist her grip free.

Cussing under her breath, surrounded by a smothering, cold, darkness, she flailed with her other hand, trying to "swim" her way back around so she could get another handhold. Her shoulder throbbed, and every attempt to pull herself back around resulted in a twanging weakness and a screaming pain. It was all she could do to keep her fingers hooked in the grate. Although her fingers were so twisted the grate was practically cutting into her.

"Okay, okay, calm down. You're just in the Tardis. Your fine, you've got air, the gravity's just gone out." She slowed her breathing, trying not to hyperventilate. Somehow, whenever she'd thought of swimming in no gravity, she'd always thought it would be like swimming in water. Air, apparently, was a lot thinner than water. She stopped moving, floating there, twisted, upside down with her feet sticking in the air, her arm twisted over her head, and her hair floating in her mouth. She spat it out. "Pthew!'

Hey! Astronauts always maneuvered around by puffing air didn't they? She took a deep breath, and blew it out as hard as she could. She couldn't tell if she'd moved in the darkness. It didn't feel like it. "Figures."

She could feel her hair tickling her face. She shook her head to get rid of it. It floated right back and tickled more. In the darkness it felt like spiders. "Aargh!" She slapped it aside with her free hand, then froze when the wrenching motion made her heel strike the edge of the console. She must have floated to a lower angle. And she'd turned, her shoulder wasn't so twisted now. Tapping tentatively with her foot she found the edge of the console again.

Bracing herself between her foot on the console and her hand in the decking, she walked her injured foot down her braced leg and hooked it under the edge of the console, pushing herself down, ignoring the pain as she tried to reach the decking. She groped below with her free hand but couldn't find the floor. Just empty space. Cursing herself, cursing the Doctor and the darkness, she eased her fingers looser in the hold she had on the deck plates, being sure to keep just enough pressure between her hand and her foot to steady her. If she could just twist around and get a hold on the console.

She twisted, stretching her free arm down along her body, straining for the console. But her armspan wasn't long enough. She was stretched out full length with one arm above her head.

She was going to have to risk it. She'd have to push off and hope she could get a grip on the controls somewhere. It wasn't like she was in space. The worst that could happen is she would bounce off and go careening around the room like a pinball, bouncing off the columns. Before she could think about it, she shoved her fingers free and jackknifed, reaching for the console. She felt her feet lose contact and float down as her body bent. They hit the floor and she instinctively pressed down, trying to stand up. "NO!" she realized her mistake instantly as she catapulted higher. She felt her fingers stub on the console and one hooked, briefly, painfully, under a handle before skinning free. She threw her hands out where she knew the column should be. She made contact, but the plasti-glass was too wide to grip and too smooth to hold. Her hands slid loose as she floated into free air.

"I'm going to kill him." she yelled to the empty, darkness. "I didn't sign up for this! If that stupid console hasn't eaten him I'm going to make him eat his overcoat!"

Feeling better for the rant, although still secretly terrified in the combined sensory deprivation of no contact and total darkness, she made herself calm down and think. She was apparently still moving. She could feel the slightest brush of cold air flowing over her. Barely a puff but it was something. If she could just move faster she'd eventually hit a wall or something and be able to get a handgrip. At least in no gravity there was no strain on her banged ankle or her sprained shoulder. Although there was also no indication if she was right side up or upside down. The blood wasn't rushing to her head, as if she was upside down, or to any other part of her that she could discern. Must be good for the blood pressure. Except when you're scared, she admitted. Or angry.

Forcing herself to think, and after another aborted attempt at swimming. She took stock of her resources, her hair and her clothes. Her hair was useless. She didn't have anything to cut it with, and it wasn't long enough to make a rope out of, even if she could see where to throw it. Her clothes. She had her jacket, shirt, bra, panties, pants, socks and shoes. Shoes. The Doctor had told her some story about using a cricket ball to bounce off a wall and shove himself backward in space. But her shoes would probably just thud and go haring off in a whole different direction. That's if she could even find a wall.

Don't think about the dark.

Maybe she could use her bra to hook the railing, or the coatrack. If she could find them.

Don't think about the dark.

The air was getting weirdly stale. Almost metallic. She couldn't tell if that was because she was running out, despite how big the Tardis was, or if it was just the taste of fear, she didn't know.

Don't think about the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Cookie Monster p.3**

What she needed was some sort of control, Rose thought as she floated helplessly, stalled, in the zero gravity and total darkness of the Tardis. Like a sail. No, there was no breeze in here. Or like a paddle. Yeah, something she could row with. After a moment's thought she twisted around and wiggled out of her jacket, hoping each moment the gyrations would make her bump into something. No such luck. She got the jacket off and pulled it around in front and stuck her arms back through the sleeves backward. She grabbed the bottom edge of the jacket zipper and started paddling, using the jacket as a cross between a paddle and a sail, like a big flipper fin.

With much grunting and puffing she pushed the jacket in front of her then swept it back below her stomach. Laboriously rowing her way through the air. She knew she was moving, she could feel the cold air flowing down her back, chilling her sweat.

Certainly it couldn't be this far to a wall. If only it wasn't so dark. She couldn't tell if she was rowing toward a wall or the floor or the ceiling or... What was that?

It wasn't dark. Not completely. She stared down at the back of her jacket. She moved it sideways, stretching the material. It was glowing blue. Just faintly. Aqua blue. It was reflecting something. She jerked her head up, scanning the darkness. Something... There. Just there, what was that?

Frantic now, hungrier for light now than she'd ever been for water, she started paddling fiercely with her jacket. There was something. Very faint. Glowing a phosphorescent blue. A blob. Indistinct, shaped like a blunt five point star, with one leg missing. What was it? Who cares! It was giving off light! If she could just get to it, maybe she could make it give off more light.

Something poked her in the thigh. Something grabbed her jacket and tangled it tight. She fought against it, jerking her arms free. Her hand knocked against something hard and curved. Her fingers latched on to what felt like a curled rams horn. There was a faint shrieking from below, near the light, and the horn moved. The faint blue star, as big as her forearm now, shifted. It's light cast upward, revealing a long skeleton. Rose screamed.

Then screamed again in delight. It was the coatrack. With a cry of joy, zerogravity tears blurring her eyes, she wrenched herself forward and wrapped both arms and legs around the old antique. She'd never realized before that it was bolted to the floor. Her weight had caused one of the bolts to shift with a squeal.

Breathing heavily in relief, she left her jacket tangled around the coatrack's "horns" and walked herself hand over hand down the pole to the faint blue light at the bottom. She reached out a tentative finger and poked it. It flopped over. She set a hand on it and almost jerked it back when she felt fur. But not real fur. Gritty, synthetic fur. Like her favorite teddy bear. Matted with old age and many adventures.

Feeling shivery and weak, weepy and disgusted with herself, she pulled herself down into a crosslegged position, hooking one leg under the coatrack to anchor herself and hugged the soft blue toy. It was musty with age, and even close up, the light its fur emitted was so feeble she could barely see its outline. But she didn't care.

Suddenly her rump plumped down and the floor jumped up against the back of her thighs, her hair bounced downward, and for a minute her whole body felt as heavy as a wet sandbag. The light came up. With a gulp and a sigh the Tardis started breathing again. There was a click and a grunt, and a shuffle, and the Doctor stood up in the repair well. "Rose, where's the dimension cap?" He looked around and saw her sitting wrapped around the coat tree. "What are you doing all the way over there?"

She stared at the Doctor, at his innocent look of puzzlement. She looked at the oversized bottlecap sitting right in front of him on the decking where she'd dropped it. She untangled herself from the coat rack, stood up, stomped over, ignoring her pains and sprains. And hit him with the Cookie Monster.

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